


Mel's Journey: A Shin Megami Tensei Tale

by Pig_catapult



Category: Shin Megami Tensei
Genre: Glitched Let's Play, I'm playing with a bad checksum and any glitches are going to happen in-story, Image Descriptions, Let's Play, Parental Abuse, Psychological Trauma, Rude NPCs, Screenshots, Shin Megami Tensei I Neutral Route, Your mom's so thoughtlessly written she came off as a two-faced jerk last night
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-09-21 00:26:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17032779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pig_catapult/pseuds/Pig_catapult
Summary: It's easy to see your player character in the first SMT game as a cool silent badass who takes the demon apocalypse in stride, since he has essentially no lines outside of the calculated trial and error of demon negotiation. Melchior is NOT a cool silent badass, and between weird dreams, his mom yelling at him, the doctor next door's office moving into his front hall in defiance of both geometry and good sense, his Sunday is off to a rough start. The week's only going to go downhill from there, but soon this scared teen's struggle to survive and determination to reunite with his lost dog will bring the downfall of both gods and demons.Originally posted to my RP Tumblr, piffyocs.





	1. Waking up, Mel's First Glitch, and Cafe Conversations!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm using Orden's patch of Aeon Genesis's English tranlsation patch for SMT v1.0 on SMT v1.1, which gives me a bad checksum, but unlike the vanilla Aeon Genesis patch doesn't make the game immediately unplayable at the first naming screen. I'm not going to discuss how I obtained the copy I'm running on snes9x-x64, but I paid real money for the iOS version, and I'm mad that Apple won't let me download that copy from the cloud to play on my phone.
> 
> I tried to keep my blog posts of this short to not muck up people's dashboards on Tumblr mobile, but here I'll be combining multiple blog posts into single chapters to avoid update-spamming here. After consideration, I'm going to be adding image descriptions to the screenshots to make it more accessible for vision-impaired readers and make it still readable in the event of link rot killing my images. [ID: this is an example description with no image attached]

> Dream Diary, XX/10/9X,
> 
> I was wandering a wobbly red maze and got interrogated by a giant stone face and then I rescued some ghost guy named Smelt from getting crucified and an asshole ghost named Calvin from getting sat on by a gremlin or smth. We wandered through the maze some more and then we accidentally walked in on some chick bathing and SHE started creeping on ME about some soulmate bullshit and I booked it out of there. And then Mom woke me up.

Melchior (Mel for short) finished writing in the dream diary on his armtop computer and rolled out of bed, not bothering to respond to his mother pounding on his door and yelling at him for sleeping late on a Sunday. He got dressed, strapped his comp to his left forearm, and logged onto DDS-NET. He had a new private message!

> **DDS-NET**  
>  **Date:**  199X-10-XX  
>  **Name:**  STEVEN  
>  **To:**  Everyone accessing this network
> 
> Humanity is currently in grave danger! Demons of legend from ages past have awakened from their long slumber. Soon, they will overrun the Earth! In order to compete with the demons and fight for our survival, we will need to utilize their power. Use this program correctly, and you should be able to!
> 
> I pray that those with the courage to use it will accept it… To fight the demons that would destroy us, and to preserve humanity…

Mel, of course, downloaded the attached DemonSummoningProgram.exe. If it turned out to be a virus, he could always install it on his mom’s comp (that’d show her; she was still yelling for him to stop sleeping in), but if it wasn’t… he didn’t really believe in demons, but having the power of one on his side didn’t sound so bad.

When he finished installing it on his computer, he noticed he’d received a second private message from Steven. Steven was apparently working on  another program, and had sent the user manual for the Demon Summoning Program in the meantime:

> This program can:  
>  -Translate demon speech  
>  -Accept and store demonic minions  
>  -Summon demons that have become your minions
> 
> Directions:
> 
> 1 When you encounter a demon, select -TALK-. The program will translate the demon’s speech.
> 
> 2 Next, you should pick a general attitude to take.
> 
>   * Friendly
>   * Threatening
> 

> 
> The reaction you want to take to the demon will be summed up in these two commands, and an initial generic communication will be broadcast to the demon. From there, the program will translate any exchange between you and the demon.

Sounded simple enough. Mel was tempted to go back to bed, but instead he got up and dressed and got ready to head out. He didn’t know where he was going yet, but  _not home_  was enough of a plan for him.

But first, he had to get past his mother. Apparently he’d slept through a whole lot of police sirens the night before, and his mother had barely been able to sleep at all. Maybe that’s why she was in such a bad mood. But at least he got his allowance… which his mom admonished him not to “waste it all too quickly” in nearly the same breath she “asked” him to go use it to buy her coffee from the mall cafe.

  
[ID: An indoor location with pale yellow walls and a blue floor. The front door is visible at the end of our protagonist’s front hall]

With his mother’s warning to not come home too late at his back, Mel escaped into the hall, and–

  
[ID: The hallway is gone. There is only an exam room and a character named “The doctor next door.” He says “Oh, if it isn’t Melchior!”, but the text box has no background, making “Melchior” creepily overlap his name on the party roster]

What was the doctor next door’s office doing in his hallway, and  _how_  did the doctor say his name like that?

  
[ID: The doctor next door’s text boss is still broken, but there’s a background now, but still no border. He asks “How are you doing?”]

“I think I might still–”

  
[ID: Doctor: “My daughter’s out at the moment.”]

Was  _this_  a demon?

  
[ID: The game doesn’t know what location image to load, so it’s blank black. The doctor’s dialogue didn’t terminate correctly, so the broken “My daughter’s out at the moment” dialogue box is still on the screen.]

MEL RAN FROM THE THING THAT WAS NOT THE DOCTOR NEXT DOOR. After tripping over things in the dark, that creature’s last statement echoing in his ears, his hand finally landed on the doorknob.

  
[ID: Same as previous, but the word EXIT is in the middle. Door labels are still working!]

He yanked the door open.

  
[ID: Normal outdoor location image. Normal dialogue box text: “There is an exit here. Will you leave?” and the player can choose Yes or No.]

Fresh air. Mel breathed deeply, then looked back. The house was back to normal! He thought about just walking out then and there, but he needed to check on someone.

  
[ID: Normal indoor location, but there’s no NPC sprite visible. According to the dialogue box, Pascal the dog says “Bowwow! Bowwow!”]

Pascal, Mel’s beloved doggo, was invisible, but seemed otherwise okay.

Time to go buy some coffee, he guessed.

  
[ID: A very stylized top-down overworld map. Melchior is represented by a blue sphere on top of a triangle. He’s standing in front of one of two red houses. Several streets are blocked off by barricades, and there is a yellow building partially visible on the right side of the screen. Translucent blue text boxes in the upper left, upper right, and lower right indicate the moon’s “age” is three eighths, which doesn’t matter right now, that Mel has 10,000 yen and zero of something called MAG, and that he is in Kichijoji.] 

At least outside seemed pretty normal. Mel allowed himself a good wiggle, turning his shoulders one way and then the other, before he checked the doctor’s house next door. The front door was unlocked as usual, so he let himself in, but the house was empty, although he could hear the doctor’s voice drifting out of the black void on the other side of the door that  _should_  have led to the man’s home office.

Well, might as well go to the mall…

  
[ID: An indoor location with brown-trimmed purple walls and a brown floor.]

The mall was a purple-walled maze. Mel found his way to the cafe quickly, but once he got there, he wasn’t in much hurry to leave. He returned the waitress’s greeting, and decided to mingle.

“Did you hear about the girl that got murdered to the south of here in Inokashira Park?” a woman to his left asked.

“No?” Mel responded, with horror.

“They said the murderer dismembered her too. Nasty!”

Mel walked away quickly.  _What the fuck_. He spotted a girl from his school and decided to try talking to her. “Hi Chise. What’s up?”

“Oh, Mel…” Chise twisted the handle of her bag between her hands. “The girl who was killed in the park was one of my classmates! I’m scared…”

This was entirely too awkward for Mel to know what to say, so he just stammered out a “I-I’m sure they’ll catch whoever did it soon, Chise,” and fled the conversation.

  
[ID: A woman with dark hair, wearing single-pixel earrings and a dark blue minidress with long sleeves and a plunging neckline. Mel doesn’t know her name yet, but her dialogue identifies her as Yuriko, the same woman who creeped on Melchior in his dream. She says “Ah, we meet again, Melchior!”]

 _NOPE_. Melchior turned on his heel while she was still talking and made a beeline for the register after all. First some sort of murder was on everyone’s mind and then the creepy lady from his dream showed up? This day had barely started and he was already Done with it.

“You know about the hospital southeast of the station, right?” The woman waiting for her coffee ahead of him took his getting into line as an invitation to converse with a captive audience.

“N–”

“Rumor has it the director of the hospital has been acting really weird lately.”

“That’s grea–”

“Someone even said he’s been performing weird experiments late at night, but that’s probably just made up.”

Mel didn’t grin at her in his discomfort so much as he bared his teeth. “Fantastic.”

Her coffee arrived, and he took the opportunity presented by her stopping to sip her drink to step up to the counter and give the shop owner a pleading look.

“Hey, welcome Melchior. I assume you’re here for your usual coffee?”

“My mom’s coffee, yeah, but she only sent me with my allowance money…” Mel admitted awkwardly.”

The shop owner waved his hand dismissively. “Money? Don’t worry about it; I’ll bring it to your house and your mom can pay me then.”

“R-really? Are you sure?” Mel asked. "I don’t want to trouble you….”

“Seriously! It’s alright! Don’t worry about it.”

“Th-thank you so much!” Mel said, relieved that he wouldn’t  _actually_  be wasting his allowance money today. He bowed slightly and started to make his way out of the cafe, unsure what to do now. He didn’t want to go home empty-handed, so he’d have to find some other way to pass his time.

Some guy nearly crashed into him in panic on his way out. “There’s some crazy guy behind the drugstore with a knife who’s attacking anyone that comes near! Babbling about monsters or demons or something…”

“Th-that’s great…” Mel replied, hurrying past him. What was  _with_  today?


	2. More Glitches, Seeing Death, and Gearing Up

Mel decided to just wander around the mall for now. The drugstore was the next shop down across the hall, so he stepped in to window shop.

  
[ID: A shop interior with default pale yellow walls and blue floor. The Drugstore Clerk is a woman in a lab coat stands behind a pharmacy counter. She says “Welcome! Leave all your medicinal needs to us!” End description.]

  
[ID: The same drugstore clerk asks “What can I do for you?”, followed by a glitched shop menu with the garbage text options “fc”, “cJ”, “io-l iN AJ”, “DqDyN nbtOmJ”, and “AnN sJ”. End description.] 

_Oh God **what.**_

Maybe the drugstore was a bad idea. Next!

  
[ID: Another shop interior. The Survival Shop Owner is a large man in a red polo shirt stands behind a counter with army jackets in the background. He says “Welcome! We’ve got everything you need to survive the oncoming millennium!” End description.] 

Okay, that was weird, but not–

  
[ID:The same glitchy menu, with the additional option “oc, mJ”. End description.]

_Fuuuuuuuck._

“I’m just gonna… go.”

  
[ID: The Survival Shop Owner says “Thank you very much. Our shop will be available to provide all of your survival needs. I guarantee it!” End description.]

Mel ducked into the storage room next to the survival shop to collect his thoughts and maybe write in his journal, but he had no luck. Some assholes were already there, and weren’t happy to see him.

  
[ID: A purple-walled room. Four dangerous-looking guys are standing there. One of them, identified in the text box as Ozawa, shouts “Hey, you! Get your ass out of here!” End description.]

“Okay.” Mel compliantly turned around and left. There were a couple other rooms near here that were usually empty, but he just didn’t want to deal with those guys or their friends anytime soon

He made his way to a secluded corner of the mall, but was foiled again by the presence of another belligerent, shady guy, who cornered him long enough to have a rant.

“God  _damn_  that bastard that runs the antique shop! He won’t sell any of his good stuff to me!” the man said, before noticing Mel’s puzzled expression. “Do you know, by the way? What kind of stuff he’s  _really_  selling there?”

“No…?” Mel started edging away, and thankfully the man let him go. Mel was getting pretty upset by now, and didn’t realize that the next hallway he went down was  _behind the drugstore_. The next thing he knew, a screaming man was brandishing a knife at him!

“W-what do you want?! What is that thing?! S-stay back! No! No, don’t come any closer! Get away from me!!”

Mel had completely frozen up, so he had no idea what the man was talking about.

“Come any closer and I’ll cut you to–” Then a wretched monster with skin the color of bruises jumped on the man and he started screaming.

  
[ID: The aforementioned demon, with the text “Haunt Preta appeared, and ripped out the man’s throat!!” End description.]

Then, in a spray of blood, the man  _stopped_  screaming, and then it turned on Mel. He was too frozen in fear to move.

  
[ID: Same image, new text: ”The Preta lunged at you!” End description.]

_He was going to die._

  
[ID: The Preta is gone and the text says “The Preta ran away.”]

It… had just run past him? He wasn’t dead. Still in shock, Mel’s gaze returned to the Attack Knife on the ground near his feet. It hadn’t done the man any good, but… that demon–it must have been a demon–hadn’t waited to negotiate.

…Was this what happened to Chise’s classmate?

Mel didn’t think about how this was a crime scene now, or how it might look to be carrying a knife with blood-spattered clothes. He was only thinking that this was  _not_  going to happen to  _him._

  
[ID: Same image, new text: “Melchior took the Attack Knife.” End description.]

Mel stumbled back into the survival shop. What other option did he have? He didn’t know when the next demon would show up; this couldn’t wait.

Luckily, whatever strange force had possessed the proprietor didn’t seem to notice the blood.

  
[ID: Same Surivial Shop menu as before. End description.]

“Um, I’d like to… buy something?” he said.

  
[ID: The equipment names are legible, but too long to display correctly. They’re layered under the indicators for gender and alignment restrictions. Unlike previous glitches, this is normal. End description.]

After a little questioning, Mel figured out that he was being offered a choice of Headgear, a Survival Vest, Leather Gloves, and Leather Boots.

He remembered his mother’s admonishment not to waste his money too quickly, then disregarded it. Having more money in his pocket meant  _nothing_  if he was dead.

He put on the new gear in the store and stepped out. He felt at least twice as safe as he had when he walked in, so he felt his money was well-spent. And now that he knew he could communicate in a limited way with these beings, he decided to pick up some Medicine at the drugstore, just in case he needed to apply first aid.

And now, despite having just spent 80% of his monthly allowance on the same day he got it, Melchior made the executive decision to go home. He would rather deal with his mom than demons at the moment.

He went straight home. Pascal was still invisible, the thing possessing the doctor next door had still parked his office in the middle of their front hall, and his mother didn’t even notice he had blood on him despite still only wanting to talk about how big the police case must be after he told her the coffee would be delivered. He re-read the user manual for the Demon Summoning Program before taking off his comp, changing into clean pajamas, and going back to bed. So fucking what if it wasn’t noon yet?

  
[ID: Mel’s room, his mother’s voice says “Good night, Melchior.”]

_Thanks for the sarcasm, Mom._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't be treating the Moon's Age counter as a measure of time in-story. It progresses with how many steps you've taken, not with how much time has realistically passed.


	3. Depression Naps, GDI Mel's Mom, and Making Fiends

> Dream Diary XX/10/9X - Nap
> 
> I was being chased by the knife man. When he caught me, his neck exploded and started filling the room with blood. I kept trying to pick up the knife, but it kept slipping out of my hand. I woke up when the blood was around waist-height

> Dream Diary XX/10/9X - Nap 2
> 
> My mom was yelling at the thing that’s not the doctor next door for not making me pay for the coffee, but the thing that’s not the doctor next door was also the creepy lady I saw at the cafe. Then they both split open and coffee beans started flooding out of them like ants, but the coffee beans were also purple demons. When I woke up Mom was still arguing with the cafe owner.

> Dream Diary XY/10/9X
> 
> The wobbly maze was blue this time. The ghosts named Smelt and Calvin were there with me, but none of us knew where we were going, other than away from that creepy chick from the red maze I ran into at the cafe. (Did I meet her before my dream last night and I just can’t remember? Is she a demon that escaped from my dream? Is she demon that INVADED my dream?)
> 
> We ended up stumbling upon this creepy ceremony, and even the ghosts thought it was weird, which seems weird for dream characters, but the whole thing was weird. Some assholes in creepy blue robes were trying to sacrifice a ghost woman, so of course we had to save her. Calvin had to be a fucking coward about it, but somehow I knew her name was Evelyn, and then the main blue robe guy was really shocked that her name was Evelyn and he and his buddies all suddenly died somehow. So much for their giant swords, CALVIN.
> 
> And then I realized we had all been naked the entire time and wished I’D suddenly died somehow, too. But instead dream-Evelyn talked about how an evil demon lord would have been summoned if I hadn’t saved her, and something about not meeting each other for a long time and then being separated anyway, but I was still really distracted by the Naked Dream thing. For once I’m glad Mom comes to yell at me in the morning so reliably.

  
[ID: Mel’s room, his mom’s voice shouting “Just because you have today off doesn’t mean you can sleep all day!” End description.]

_Wait… I **still**  have the day off? It’s Monday…_

  
[ID: Mel’s room, his mom’s voice shouting “Come on, wake up!” End description.]

Mel quietly opened his COMP and checked his private messages.

> **DDS-NET**  
>  **Date:**  199X-10-XY  
>  **Name:**  STEVEN
> 
> I have completed my auto-mapping program, and have attached it to this message.

Since his bad sense of direction had nearly gotten him killed the other day, Mel downloaded and installed the attachment immediately.

“Melchior, how long do you plan to sleep?!”

Melchior gave his bed a longing look, but pulled on clean clothes and his new survival gear, strapped his COMP to his arm, and left the room.

“Good morning, Melchior!” his mom greeted him, as if she hadn’t just been yelling at him or banging on his bedroom door. “What happened to you last night? You were calling out to someone in your sleep.”

 _I came home in bloody clothes and a new set of protective gear, but **that’s** what you noticed?_ Melchior thought, but didn’t say. He just started heating up water for his instant miso.

His mother kept prying in all the stupidest places. “I think it was a woman’s name… the girl next door, Evelyn, was it?”

Melchior felt his face heat up as he how embarrassing it had been to rescue someone and then realize they’d all been naked.

“Eh? Why are you turning all red all of a sudden?” His mom faked surprise, and his cheeks only grew hotter as he saw that she was  _trying_  to humiliate him. “It can’t be…”

“FUCK OFF, MOM.” Melchior abandoned his quest for water, stuffed the instant miso packet in his bag, and stormed down the hall.

“Be careful, Melchior. Don’t come home too late!”

“Maybe I  _won’t_  come home!”

  
[ID: The same picture of the doctor next door, who's really in the front hall, saying "Oh, if it isn't Melchior!" with a broken textbox. End description.]

“Hi, Doctor Voidcreature. Interested in being my new dad?”

As expected, the thing that was not the doctor next door ignored him. “My daughter’s in her room at the moment. Hey, Ev̫ͅel̟y̦̳n̟! M̯ͅel͇ch̘io̹r̗͇ ’s here to see you!”

“Okay, I hear you!” Oddly, Next-Door-Evelyn’s voice drifted pretty clearly through the void.

Melchior guessed he was visiting Next-Door-Evelyn. He said hello to Pascal first, though.

  
[ID: Blank black glitch screen, except Pascal the dog saying "Bowwow! Bowwow!" End description.]

As good a boy as ever, if still unseeable. Mel found his dog by touch and gave him belly rubs. “Don’t worry, Pascal,” he whispered. “I’ll always come back for you. Just don’t tell Mom.”

Pascal licked his face.

  
[ID: Evelyn's room, text says "Nobody's here." End description.] 

Next-Door-Evelyn was  _not_  in her room. Mel thought that perhaps she had been taken by the void. There wasn’t much he could do if that was the case. He left the house next door.

_Might as well go to the m–_

  
[ID: The combat screen. Text says "Fairy Pixie! Command?", and there is a blue-clothed little woman with wings. Options are "Fight", "Escape", "Talk", and "Auto". End description.] 

_–all._

Two pixies had decided to ambush him right outside. At first, he froze up and just tried to defend himself from their attacks. One missed, and the other only nicked him. Then he remembered Steven’s program. He opened up his COMP and ran the Demon Summoning Program.

  
[ID: Selected Talk. Text says "Tried talking to the demon..." End description.] 

> Take which attitude?  
>  >Friendly  
>  Threatening

He wanted to make friends with some demons so he’d stand a chance, right?

**“You’re in my way; please step aside.”**

> Pixie is mocking you.

_Gee, thanks._  Mel decided to just roll with it and stepped aside.

 **“Ahh! Come here, come quickly!”**  The Pixie beckoned him closer.

Mel sighed. “Alright.” He walked up to the Pixies. They  _immediately_  started laughing at him.

**“What an idiot! Ha ha ha ha ha!”**

**“Yeah!”**

  
[ID: Text says "The demons suddenly assaulted you!" End description.] 

“Oh  _fuck off!_ " Mel shouted. The pixies were only able to scratch him in his new gear, but it  _stung!_  Looked like his only other option was to try out that Attack Knife.

One went down immediately, and he felt bad for cutting it in two, but only for a moment. The other Pixie had thrown some kind of magical dust at him, and a feeling of bliss hit him like a brick wall made of pillows that wrapped him in sugar clouds….

_NO.  
_

_FUCK THIS._

Mel fatally slashed the other fairy, too, then fell to his knees and started crying. He felt like his reaction time would be a little faster in the future, but that didn’t matter to him at the moment. His first thought was to bury the awful little creatures, but their bodies turned to tiny grains of glittering dust and scattered in the wind, leaving behind only their worldly possessions: A few leaves, a piece of string, and exactly eight yen. He ultimately decided to pocket the change.


	4. Cafe Confessions, Inorganic-Presenting Pixels, and Making Fiends 2

Mel picked himself back up and wiped his face. Maybe… maybe if he was more intimidating next time, the demons would take him seriously?

He actually made it all the way to the cafe without running into more demons. The waitress up front greeted him like usual. Maybe she hadn’t seen any, or they hadn’t bothered her?

The same woman who’d been talking about the murder yesterday was still there and talking someone else’s ear off about the dismemberment thing. He started to walk towards Chise, but–

“Something big went down in Shinjuku, I hear,” the woman who’d previously regaled him with doctor-related gossip said, stepping directly into his path to make him listen to her.

“Um…”

“Whatever it was, it was serious enough to shut it off from the rest of the city.”

“That’s grea–”

“All the trains have been stopped until further notice!”

Well that explained why school was still out, at least.

“So we can’t go anywhere… we’re stuck here! What a drag!”

“Hey! Chise! Didn’t see you there!” Melchior called out, darting around the complaining woman. “What’s up?

“Hi Mel. Some guy called Ozawa was here looking for Evelyn,” Chise said softly.

“What did this Ozawa guy look like?”

Chise described the same guy who’d shouted him out of the storage room next to the survival shop. That… that was worrying, but he didn’t know what to do with it. Which would be worse, that Evelyn was lost in the Void, or that she’d been found by this Ozawa asshole?

“Well, I hope she’s okay,” Mel said finally. Chise nodded, and he headed over to the register, dodging around the woman who  _really_  wanted to tell him more about how inconvenient whatever happened in Shinjuku was.

The cafe owner greeted him, and they chatted a little while he was making Mel’s mocha.

“You hear about the murder in the park? Talk about a shock!”

“Yeah,” Mel sighed. “One of your customers won’t shut up about the gory details.”

“She’s like that,” the cafe owner admitted. He lowered his voice. “I’d kick her out, but she buys  _so much_  coffee when she’s writing.”

Mel sighed. “Understandable. Do you think I’ll be able to head to the park today?” he asked. “I really want to be out of the house.”

“They closed the whole place down because of it, but I hear they’re going to reopen it,” the cafe owner said. “Even after it was closed, there was some strange old man hanging around the entrance. Maybe he’s a homeless guy?”

“Anything’s possible,” Mel said. “Be careful on your way home, okay? Weird stuff’s been going on.” He started to turn away.

“Melchior, what’s going on?” the cafe owner asked suddenly.

Mel froze.

“You have scratches on your face, and you look like you bought out next door’s fall fashion. You’re wearing a  _helmet._  If your mother–”

“It’s not my mom,” Melchior said quickly. Then he fell silent “… This is going to sound crazy.”

The cafe owner leaned forward and put his elbows down on the counter. “Try me.”

“… I was attacked by demons on my way here,” Melchior said after a long moment. “One came at me yesterday, too. It’s why I bought all this gear. My next door neighbors’ house has gone all weird and one of them has been replaced by something else that’s moved his office into our front hallway–like, his office is  _physically_  in the middle of our front hall now. The whole room is there.”

“You’re right,” the cafe owner said seriously. “That sounds crazy. Have you tried going to the hospital?”

“No?”

“Consider it,” the cafe owner said. “But in the meantime, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want today, even if you don’t buy any more coffee.”

“Thanks,” Melchior said, and he meant it. He ended up sitting down in the corner of the cafe furthest from the door, and let the guy at the table next to him talk about how he thought the abandoned Echo building next to the station should be utilized instead of being left vacant.

  
[ID: Man in plaid shirt says "It's a nice spot. There're a million things they could do with it." End description.] 

Mel got out his journal to measure his options as he nursed his mocha.

> \- Look for Evelyn  
>  ~~Search the void?~~  No  
>  Confront Ozawa?
> 
> \- Check out park  
>  Look for old man?  
>  Watch out for murder demons
> 
> \- Look for demons  
>  Try intimidation!
> 
> \- Go to hospital?

He quickly crossed off searching the void. He knew nothing about it, and he didn’t want to be replaced by one of the human-mimicking things he was thinking of as ‘voidcreatures’ now.

He didn’t know where to start searching for demons–maybe the park–and he didn’t think he’d lost his mind yet, so he was considering the hospital a low priority at the moment. So that left two destinations: The storage room where he’d last seen Ozawa, and the park. Both sounded dangerous, but Ozawa was closer, but Ozawa also had some equally tough-looking friends, and Mel was alone…

Which brought him back to finding demons. He guessed he’d search the mall first, and try out the Auto-Mapper Steven had sent him.

  
[ID: An extremely simple partial map of the mall area, made of square cells. It's unmarked except for a yellow square showing Melchior's location.] 

… There didn’t seem to be any way to put down markers on this map, so he might have to draw his own in the future, but this would still be good. He finished his mocha and decided to go.

  
[ID: A doorway labelled "KNIVES_". End description.] 

Melchior decided to at least  _look_  at the knife shop. The cashier turned out to be a voidcreature, too, but the relevant selection was a little easier to understand, and out of his price range. He moved on.

  
[ID: Combat start. "Machine Puppet! Command?" Machine Puppet is a broken mannequin with visible electronics inside. A round Tumblr logo has been edited in to conceal its torso and the non-graphic pixel nudity beneath. End description]

 _Holy shit._  In all honesty, Mel didn’t know if this damaged mannequin-robot that had just stumbled into his path was a demon or not, but it didn’t look like it was going to let him past without confrontation. He opened up his COMP and tried to start negotiation.

> Take which attitude?  
>  Friendly  
>  >Threatening

> Puppet is giving off signals.

Mel stared at his COMP screen a moment, hoping it would elaborate on if those were  _good_  signals or  _bad_  signals.

It didn’t, but they turned out to be signals for backup. A second Puppet showed up, and both got ready to attack him. Mel decided to attack first, but his Attack Knife got stuck in the plastic skin of the Puppet nearest him, and he had to kick the robot with the sole of his boot to dislodge the weapon. Luckily, they were both clumsy enough that he was able to topple them both over, causing their counterattacks to miss wildly.

Mel made the executive decision to  _bravely run away_. Maybe he’d find a better way to fight those later.

 

So going past the knife shop wasn’t in the picture for the moment, and he didn’t want to risk running into Ozawa by mapping the area he’d been to the day before, so Mel decided to go outside to find demon allies.

  
[ID: The overworld map. Melchior is standing outside the south entrance of the yellow building from before. There are train tracks and a station in red, and there are two other yellow buildings to the south. End description] 

He walked across the street to the train station. Sure enough, the iron shutters were down in front of the building, with a note that the trains were stopped until further notice. So he walked down to the parking lot, and quickly found what he was looking for.

  
[ID: "Jirae Brownie! Command?" The Brownie is a tiny green-clothed humanoid with a round yellow hat and boots. Their skintone is a slightly darker brown than the medium-light brown one that has been the default for sprites so far. End description.] 

> Take which attitude?  
>  Friendly  
>  >Threatening

**“Hya hya hya! You want to fight, then come on!”**

> Brownie is watching you warily.

“You think you stand a chance?” Mel shot back, sounding more confident than he felt.

**“I’m gonna send you to hell! Hya ha ha ha!”**

> Brownie is trying to intimidate you.

Mel glowered. The Brownie recoiled melodramatically.

**“Ahh! I feel so dirty with you staring at me like that!”**

> Brownie is mocking you.

“That’s great.”

The Brownie fell back on one of its previous taunts:  **“Hya hya hya! You want to fight, then come on!”**

> Brownie is watching you warily.

Melchior took a step forward.

**“Erk! S-s-s-s-stop! Are you really gonna kill me?”**

Mel sighed. “No.”

**“You want me to be your minion?”**

“You got it.”

**“33 MAG… You know, I’d really like that. Give it to me and I’ll be your minion.”**

> Give them 33 MAG?

“Sorry, don’t have any of that.” He didn’t even know what MAG  _was._

 **“Well, FINE then!”** The Brownie stomped.  **“OK then, 97 yen. How does that sound?”**

“Can you make change for a hundred?” Melchior offered a hundred yen coin.

 **“Yeah…”**  the Brownie grumbled, and gave him three yen back, then pocketed the coin.  **“Heh heh heh… You’ve still got more, don’t you?”**

Melchior raised his eyebrows. Were all demons this demanding?

 **“Now I just want, hmm…”**  The brownie put its chin on its hand in thought.  **“A Life Stone. That’s OK, right?”**

Mel shook his head.  **“I don’t even know what that is.”**

 **“Well, FINE!”**  the Brownie growled, then called to its compatriot:  **“Kill ‘im!”**

_I didn’t want to have to do this…_

Mel lashed out with his knife as the little demons jumped on him, scratching with their sharp little nails. He had to stab the first one three times before it turned into chunks of crystal, but he’d barely cut the second one before it jumped away long enough to do a little dance. Mel found himself engulfed in the same sort of blissful feeling as the Pixie’s dust had.

He managed to fight through it again, but not before the Brownie cast some sort of spell that surrounded it with light. Its movements became more precise, but that didn’t help it when he pounced on it, stabbing it once. It crumpled, and he was on cloud nine long enough for the Brownie to bite his nose in one final act of defiance before it died.

Even though the fight had been harder physically, emotionally he felt a little tougher. If this was what it took to survive, so be it.

Somehow, his 100-yen coin was missing from the Brownies’ personal effects, but he found 64 yen in loose change and a small round stone with the kanji for  _Life_  carved on it. Maybe he’d find MAG, too, if he killed more demons.


	5. Grinding Random Encounters, Making Fiends 3, and Making Friends

Mel started wandering around near the mall some more, but instead of more demons, a human approached him… a human who had an Attack Knife, too, and a murderous look in his eyes.

  
[ID: "Foul Thug! Command?" This is a knife-wielding human in a blue or teal suit.] 

“H-hey, can we talk about this?”

“You brat, I’m gonna send you six feet under!”

_What the fuck?_

The man went right for his chest in the ensuing struggle, but luckily the Survival Vest took the brunt of the damage. It still  _hurt_ , but the guy dropped after a couple panicked stabs, spraying blood onto Mel’s face and hands. He didn’t have any time to process his first genuine homicide, because more Brownies had been drawn by the commotion, and he had to kill them, too.

The 120 yen he found in the crystalline dust of their corpses was no comfort to him. He’d gone from a blood-spattered innocent to a blood-spattered killer in a little over 24 hours.

An unpleasant half hour later, Mel was scratched up, and his muscles ached, and he felt  _terrible_ , but he was getting tougher, stronger, and faster, and he’d figured out what MAG was. According to the Demon Summoning Program, MAG was the crystalline stuff the demons turned into. The only pieces big enough for the program to deem useable so far had come from the surprisingly cuttable spectral bodies of what he was pretty sure were angry  _ghosts_. He’d also picked up another Attack Knife from a second human who’d attacked him, but he did his best to run from those fights after that. It was too hard psychologically to fight someone who bled and didn’t crumble to crystal pieces when they died.

When he’d gathered 34 units of MAG, finally enough that he  _could_  have paid that Brownie, He decided to drag himself home for a power nap. He could still hear “Evelyn” in the void, but he didn’t believe it was her anymore. He’d seen what he could only describe as zombies out there. The void was probably a trap.

He snuck past his mother, soaked the bloody parts of his shirt in cold soapy water with a little 3% peroxide while he took a quick, stinging shower, started the laundry, and flopped into bed. When he woke up, he was crying, but he couldn’t remember what he’d dreamt about. More unusual than that, though, was that his scratches were  _gone_. Even his nose in the bathroom mirror looked and felt like it hadn’t been bitten. He looked down at his hands, and they didn’t look like a Picasso painting, so  _this_  wasn’t a dream. If he hadn’t still had the loose change, MAG, and other items he’d looted from his… kills… he would have thought  _that_  had been the dream.

He opened up his journal and decided to inventory what he had gathered.

> 604 yen in small coins (Total yen: 2199)  
>  34 MAG  
>  1 Medicine  
>  3 Life Stones  
>  1 Aquamarine

Well… it was probably time to try recruiting some demons. He geared back up and snuck back out.

A few angry ghosts and some close calls with other violent humans later, Mel finally tracked down some Pixies. Threatening them didn’t seem to help, either; they just called him a moron and attacked him. He was starting to not be a fan of Pixies. Maybe he’d have better luck with Brownies?

  
[ID: Combat screen with Brownie. Text says "Brownie is trying to run away." End description.]  
  
[ID: Combat screen with Brownie. Text asks "What will you do?" and offers two options, "Stop it from leaving" or "Leave it alone". "Stop it from leaving" is selected. End description.] 

**“Hya hya hya hya!”**

  
[ID: Combat screen with Brownie. Text says "Brownie left." End description.] 

Okay, maybe threatening demons  _wasn’t_  the way to go.

 

Feeling a bit smarter now, Mel continued his search. It took him a few more failures, but eventually he got it right:

> Take which attitude?  
>  >Friendly  
>  Threatening

**“Hya hya hya hya!”**

> Brownie is laughing.

Melchior didn’t have it in him to laugh right now. He just waited for the Brownie to stop.

**“What a jerk!”**

> They’ve gotten pretty upset.

At first Melchior wasn’t sure what to do, but a note came up on his COMP that suggested singing.

 _Why not? I’ve tried everything else._  Melchior didn’t know  _what_  to sing, so he tried the opening theme of his favourite TV show.

**“Har har har! You’re a riot, human! You wanna get cozy with me or something?”**

> It looks like Brownie will hear you out. What will you ask it for?  
>  >Make it your minion  
>  Money  
>  Magnetite  
>  Go away

The demon considered.  **“A Life Stone… You know, I’d really like that. Give it to me and I’ll be your minion.”**

Luckily, he had quite a few of those now. “Sure.” He rolled one over.

 **“Heh heh heh…”**  The Brownie pocketed it.  **“You’ve still go more, don’t you? Now I just want, hmm… a Life Stone. That’s OK, right?”  
**

“Um… yeah.” Mel rolled another over.

**“Heh heh heh… You’ve still got more, don’t you? Now I just want… hmm… a Life Stone. That’s okay, right?”**

Mel sighed. “You could have just asked for three at once and I’d have given them to you, you know” he said, walking up and crouching to put the third Life Stone directly into the Brownie’s waiting hands.

The Brownie grinned up at him with sharp teeth as it stashed its payment away.  **“Hee-Ho! OK, I’ll be your minion!”**  Then it jumped up, turned into a ball of light, and entered his COMP through one of the data ports. 

  
[ID: Combat screen with Brownie. Text says "Jirae Brownie became your minion." End description.] 

For the first time in a long time, Melchior felt a lot less alone in the world.


	6. Leaning on the Fourth Wall and Could-Do List

  
[ID: Jirae Brownie's status page. The sprite is in the upper right. Brownie is a weak law-aligned demon with awful strength and decent defense. It can cast Sukukaja to raise the accuracy and evasion stats for friendlies, Sukunda to lower evasion and accuracy for enemies, or use the special move Happy Step to have a chance to inflict Bliss on each of a group of enemies. End Description.]

Mel fussed with the menus on his COMP, and eventually got it to spit out [some more useful information](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fmegamitensei.fandom.com%2Fwiki%2FBrownie%23Shin_Megami_Tensei_2&t=Y2UzNTRkMzdlODQ0NWZlNTQ1OTY0ZTk0NzA1YzZiY2NjMzAxODhjYix0R2hSQ0hDRQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AjBRoNTua6kBvC16U4lc6VA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fpiffyocs.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F181062792249%2Fmels-journey-16-leaning-on-the-fourth-wall&m=1), even if he didn’t know what some of those stats  _meant_ , along with some information about what a Brownie  _was_ :

> Origin: England.  
>  They are small fairies who help with chores. If you leave milk and bread for them, they will do housework for you during the night. But, if you do any more than that, they will leave your home. 

“You traveled a long way, huh?” Mel asked.

Unexpectedly, Brownie responded!  **“Hya hya hya! Kid, you’ve got no idea,”**  it spoke through the COMP speaker.  **“Looks like I’m the first one to put up my feet in here.”**

“Yeah, you’re my first, uh… minion?” Mel said. “I’ve only been at this a day.”

**“Hya! A total rookie! Well no summoner of mine is going into this _clueless._ ”**

“There’s a user manual?” Mel offered weakly.

**“Show me.”**

Mel opened up the file.

…

**“Rubbish! This hardly tells you anything! Print this out sometime so I can rip it up!”**

“O-okay?”

**“You need two things to summon demons: Money, and Magnetite–MAG for short. Every kind of demon has a Bribe Pot they share. Bribes go in, bribes come out. If you want me to come out, you’ll have to pay 64 yen into the Brownie Pot for my friends.”**

“And the Magnetite?”

**“You humans eat meat to keep your bodies made of meat going, right?”**

“Oh.” Melchior thought a moment before asking his next question. “Why have demons been attacking humans?”

 **“You’re not made of _just_  meat!”** Brownie said.  **“There’s no better source of new MAG than humans.”**

Mel’s stomach flipped. “ _Oh._ ”

Brownie seemed to sense his discomfort.  **“The best way to stay safe somewhere is to recruit demons from the area you’re in. As long as you don’t dismiss or fuse me, just talk to other Brownies and they’ll leave you alone.”**

“What’s fusing?”

**“Hya hya hya! You don’t even know demons can fuse together into stronger demons? Geez kid, what do they teach you in school these days?”**

“Nothing about how to survive a demon invasion.”

**“Rubbish! Come on, summon me and let’s go kick some ass.”**

“Okay.” Melchior summoned Brownie, and watched the process reverse as light burst out of his COMP’s main data port and crystallized into the bouncy little demon.

 

“Before we kick some ass, will you look at this?” Melchior sat down against the wall of a building and opened up his journal, holding it off to one side.

Instead of standing next to him like Mel had expected, Brownie just climbed up onto his knee and sat.  **“Is this a to-do list?”**

“It’s a  _could_ -do list. Writing it down helps me decide what to do.”

> \- Look for Evelyn  
>  ~~Search the void?~~  No  
>  Confront Ozawa?
> 
> \- Check out park  
>  Look for old man?  
>  Watch out for murder demons
> 
> \- Look for demons  
>  Try intimidation!
> 
> \- Go to hospital?

**“Who’s Evelyn?”**

“My next-door neighbor. I’m worried that either this weird void that’s taken over part of her house has eaten her, or that this delinquent guy Ozawa has gotten to her.”

**“Then let’s go kick _his_  ass. But if we see any demons like Fairy Pixie or… yeah, you could just about boss around a Jack Frost at your level, try being friendly. It doesn’t always work, but you get farther using sugar than vinegar with them.”**

Melchior winced. “Do I really need to recruit a Pixie?”

 **“D’you like not dying?”**  Brownie asked.

“… I’ll try being friendly to Pixies.”

> \- Look for Evelyn  
>  ~~Search the void?~~  No  
>  Confront Ozawa ~~?~~  Yes
> 
> \- Check out park  
>  Look for old man?  
>  Watch out for murder demons
> 
> \- Look for demons  
>  ~~Try intimidation!~~  Be friendly to Pixie + Jack Frost
> 
> \- Go to hospital?

Brownie jumped up to its feet when he finished writing.  **“Let’s go–! Hey, what’s your name? I can’t just call you ‘kid’ all the time.”**

“It’s Mel.”

**“Short for Melvin?”**

“Worse.”

**“…Melody?”**

“Melchior.”

Brownie clapped a hand over its eyes and threw its head back.  **“Hya hya hya! That IS bad!”**

Mel chuckled at the melodrama and got to his feet. “Told you.”


	7. Panicking Slightly and Growing Concerns

Mel headed straight back into the mall and to the storage room where he last saw Ozawa. It was a short trip and they didn’t meet any other demons on the way.

  
[ID: The door to where Ozawa and his gang were last time.]  
  
[ID: Ozawa and his gang are still here. Ozaway still says, "Hey, you! Get your ass out of here!"]  
  
[ID: The game still automatically walks Mel out of the room. The event is exactly as before. End description.]

**“What happened to kicking his ass?!”**  Brownie asked.

“He started yelling and I panicked,” Mel answered honestly. “But I didn’t see Evelyn there with him.”

Brownie sighed.  **“Geez, Mel. Let’s search this place and then check out the park.”**

Mel nodded, and headed into the next room over–another storage room, this one too full of shipping containers to make a good hangout. To his surprise, some more Brownies jumped out at him, ready to fight.  “Uh, Hi.”

This gave the brownies enough pause that they noticed the Brownie standing next to him. Their demeanor changed immediately  **“Hee-Ho! Be nice to my buddy!”**  one said, and they peacefully walked past him out the door.  **“Uh-Ho! Have fun with those zombies!”**

Mel spun on his heel and saw that three zombies had closed in on the storage room. Of course the other Brownies had made themselves scarce, but at least he had the one.

The fight wasn’t fast or easy, but Mel got through it not much worse for wear. Brownie, on the other hand, was so much smaller…

“Are you okay?” Mel knelt down and dug through his bag for something to patch up the cracks in Brownie’s body. “Here…”

  
[ID: Mel selects one of two Life Stones in his inventory to use on Brownie. End description.]

It didn’t work as well as Mel had hoped, but the light that flowed out of the Light Stone as it disintegrated had a little more than halfway healed Brownie’s wounds. “I have another…”

**“Don’t worry about it. You might need that to bribe a Pixie later.”**

“What do Pixies do that’s so important?”

**“They know Dia.”**  Brownie realized that Mel didn’t know what that was.  **“It’s a healing spell.”**

“Okay.” Mel got up and started waking. “Come on, I’ll find you that Pixie.”

He heard a giggle.  **“Find me for what?”**  A Pixie was waiting just as he turned the corner.

Melchior gave a start. He hadn’t been expecting to be eavesdropped on. He smiled nervously. “Uh, can we be friends?”

The Pixie rolled its eyes and turned its head to the side, as if the wall were fascinating.

 

> The demon is ignoring you.

_That’s great,_  Mel thought. “Um, my name’s Mel, and–”

**“I love strong men! Do whatever you want with me!”**

“What–”

  
[ID: Fairy Pixie became your minion. End description.]

_“What?!_ ”

Brownie fell to the floor laughing.  **“Hya hya hya! You’re a real ladies’ man, aren’t y–owthathurts. Hya hya hya hya!”**

Cheeks burning, Mel brought up Pixie’s [info page](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fmegamitensei.fandom.com%2Fwiki%2FPixie%23Shin_Megami_Tensei_2&t=YzkwYTk5MzRjMDIzMmQxYWI4M2QzMWVkNjk3ZTA0MDMzOWFlYjg4OCxOdDU3cENobg%3D%3D&b=t%3AjBRoNTua6kBvC16U4lc6VA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fpiffyocs.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F181096108714%2Fmels-journey-18-panicking-slightly&m=1) on his COMP.

 

> Origin: England.  
>  Good-natured fairies who love pranks. They live in groups centered about a king. They are about the size of one’s palm, but can grow to human size as well. They love song and dance, and the morning after their revelries, a fairy ring is found.

He summoned her, paying 64 yen into the Pixie Pot.  “Um, h-hi, Pixie. Can you heal Brownie with Dia?”

Pixie winked.  **“Sure thing, handsome.”**

After a swirl of green light, Brownie looked completely healed now. And that was what kept Mel from fully regretting this decision.

Mel, Brownie, and Pixie had only mapped one square on the automap before they confronted by a kind of demon Mel had never seen before.

  
[ID: Hybrid Weredog! Command? Weredog is a fanged and clawed humanoid holding a sword above their head with both hands, ready to strike. End description] 

Mel, naturally, screamed. His two minions both started laughing at him, which didn’t put him in the best mindset for starting negotiations. “Watch where you’re swinging that  _fucking sword!_ ”

Such harsh words must have been too much for the Weredog, because it turned tail and ran. Mel let it. It looked better armed than he was, and at least its superior cowardice shut Pixie and Brownie up.

There wasn’t much else back there, and Mel didn’t  _really_  want to go back behind the drug store, but in the name of not seeming scared, he did. A man he recognized as one of his mother’s friends was loitering by the crime scene tape, and the man recognized him before he had a chance to walk away unnoticed.

“Hey, Melchior! Some strange old man was looking for you!”

“That’s great.” Mel wondered why the man wasn’t reacting to Brownie and Pixie. Did he not  _see_  them? “Did he say why?”

The man shook his head.

Might as well try to get a little more information. “What did he look like?”

“Y’know…  _strange_ , and old.”

“… That’s great.” Mel turned around and walked away briskly. He caught a glimpse of Pixie making faces at the man and smiled.

A while later, they ran into the Machine Puppet he’d stabbed earlier. It looked a little more scuffed up and less coordinated than the last time he’d seen it. Bringing it down still took a while, but it was so clumsy that Pixie literally danced circles around the Puppet and none of them got even grazed. Unlike the demons he’d fought, the Puppet’s body didn’t turn to MAG, but its battery compartment was packed with four carved cylinders of it.

**“Ew, creeeepyyy…”**  Pixie whined.

Mel remembered what Brownie had said about meat, and found himself agreeing. “… Yeah, that’s creepy.”

There wasn’t anything else of interest in the mall, except perhaps to note that the antiques store owner was still human.

“I guess that leaves the park.”


	8. The Park and The Heck?

  
[ID: Overworld view, right outside the entrance to the park. End description.]

Mel, Brownie, and Pixie had stopped by his house for a quick rest–and to confirm his mother couldn’t see them. All she had to say was some backhanded compliment about how raising him would be even harder if he’d been a girl after he didn’t take her bait about how Evelyn was getting to ‘ _that age’_. He didn’t want to dwell on it.

“Keep your eyes out for a strange old man, I guess,” Mel said, although nearly as soon as he said it, he realised he hadn’t needed to.

  
[ID: An old man with a long white beard sits in the middle of a tree-lined road. Text box says "Inokashira Park". End description.]

**“Found him!”**  Brownie shouted.

“You must be Melchior,” the old man said, not rising from where he sat in the middle of the path.

“Who told you–”

“Yes, yes, I see. Yes, you are quite special indeed.”

“E-excu–?”

“Maybe you don’t see it now, but it is quite possible that one day you will wield power beyond your wildest imagination.”

“Um…”

“Light and Darkness, Law and Chaos… The delicate balance that this world rides on is beginning to tip.”

“That’s grea–”

“While the forces of Law and Chaos that are still in motion now are still weak…”

“Can you stop waxing poetic and just say things plainly?!” Melchior burst out, but the old man had taken a breath and was already talking over him.

“…THERE WILL COME A TIME SOON where they shall gain power and momentum, vying for supremacy over each other. However, it matters not on which side the weight falls. Either way, the result will be the same, a scale unbalanced.”

Melchior rocked back on his heels and just waited for the man to stop talking.

“If you were in charge, which, if either, would you choose?”

Melchior, perhaps foolishly at this point, started to open his mouth.

“Be mindful! No matter which path you take, there’s no turning back once the decision has been made.”

Melchior stared.

“… Why don’t you show me what you’re capable of for the time being?”

“N–” And that was when Melchior blacked out.

  
[ID: A default indoor location. Smelt the no-clothes ghost asks: “Now what’s going on?” This still frame does not capture the background undulating, nor the sprite flicker applied to spirits and other insubstantial beings. End description.]

  
[ID: Calvin has the same ghost sprite. He says: “Dreaming in the middle of the afternoon? Oy, now I’m really losing it!” End description.]

This wobbly maze seemed a lot more  _real_  this time. It seemed so real, in fact, that Mel immediately started feeling a churning nausea. He brought his hands up to cover his mouth.

That was when he  _saw_  his hands.

His hands were a flickery kind of see-through, just like Smelt and Calvin, but they were proportioned normally and had all the right fingers in all the right places. He  _wasn’t_  dreaming.

“Oh  _fuck,_  the naked dreams are real,” he blurted out. Oddly, hearing Brownie and Pixie fall over themselves laughing at his plight made him feel a little  _better_  this time. At least one thing hadn’t changed.

His feet carried him without his input through the halls, including up several flights of stairs, before suddenly the flickering form of his (thankfully clothed) mother appeared.

“Melchior, no!” she said, sounding strangely concerned. “It’s dangerous ahead! Don’t any of you go a step further!” She paused, face twisting in unfamiliar resignation. “… I know I can’t stop you. But if you die, what will I do…?”

Melchior wanted to stop and ask who she was and what she’d done with his mom, but then she vanished, and his legs pulled him forward into a strange chamber with a public terminal. He’d read about these rooms before. The round green sensors studding the curved, grooved walls were a kind of scanner used in new teleportation technology. They’d been installed in a lot of places around Tokyo recently, but he’d never had the occasion to go to one.

That didn’t explain why there was a torii gate erected over the terminal, or why a man in a lab coat stood conducting a ceremony over it while several women shook [shide](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FShide_%28Shinto%29&t=M2YxZTQ2YTc0ZmI5ZjRlYTBkYTVhOGMyNTBhZmM3Yzc1M2U0MjRlZCw2VXpWOElWbA%3D%3D&b=t%3AjBRoNTua6kBvC16U4lc6VA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fpiffyocs.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F181453718434%2Fmels-journey-21-the-heck&m=1)-adorned wands.

“My brethren!” the man shouted into the computer terminal’s microphone. “Come forth from the depths of the Abyss!”

Mel said nothing, but it was no use. One of the women spotted them and reacted.

The man turned around. “Eh? What are you doing here!?”

“Um, w-well…” Melchior backed out of the room as the man advanced. Everyone else with him seemed to have the same idea.

“As you have seen our ceremony, I cannot allow you to leave this place alive!”

“Wh- _what?!_ ”

And then the man transformed before their eyes. He grew so tall he had to bend forward to not bump the ceiling, his skin turned a bright gold with white stripes on his bare legs, and his clothing changed completely into a green robe with a huge red-and-white striped collar framing his newly-bald head.

  
[ID: “Human Doman! Command?” He doesn’t look all that human anymore, as above. End description.]

“Can we talk abou–”

“No time for talk,” Calvin snapped. “He’s out for blood!”

Mel really should have expected that. “Then let’s throw our best attacks at him. Brownie, do that dance; it might distract him.”

Pixie’s Zionga (a stronger version of the lightning spell Zio) and Calvin’s Agi (a fire spell) both seemed to do a lot of damage, but Mel’s slashing and Smelt’s Zan (a force spell) didn’t do much, and Brownie’s dance had no effect. Mel got ready for Doman’s counterattack, and–

–and he was back in the park.

“Indeed,” said the old man. “It would seem that you are not ready as of yet.”

**“Rubbish!”**  Brownie snapped back.

“I thought we were doing alri–”

“If fate so decrees, you shall meet again. Ready yourself before you rush ahead…” And then the man suddenly sprung to his feet and dashed off.

“ _Fuck you,_  old man,” Mel muttered.

Pixie patted his shoulder.  **“We did good. Come on! Let’s check out that red building!”**

“Okay.” Mel managed a smile, and jogged after Pixie as she zoomed ahead.

The red building turned out to be a small shrine. It was just as rosy on the inside, with red carpet and light orange walls. Placards designated two doors as “Cathedral of Shadows” and “Healer”. The other two doors turned out to be small storage rooms, and Brownie and Pixie both pushed him to filch 400 units of MAG and a bit of medicine, just in case.

Finally, Mel decided to step into the Cathedral of Shadows.

“Welcome to the Cathedral of Shadows, where demons gather,” said a blue-robed priest. He had a very long, white beard and wore sunglasses despite the very dark chapel room.

“Hi. What–”

Everything around him suddenly froze. He didn’t know how long it stayed that way. It could have been a few seconds. It could have been an eternity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s where this version+patch became unplayable, sadly. It freezes when you select a demon to fuse. Let’s roll back to SMT v1.0 and try playing up to this point again!


End file.
